I am an entrepreneur and communications expert from Salt Lake City, founder of Snapp Conner PR, and author of Beyond PR: Communicate Like A Champ The Digital Age, available at http://amzn.to/1AO0PxX. I am also a frequent author and speaker on Business Communication. The opinions I express (especially when tongue in cheek) are entirely my own. My newsletter is the Snappington Post, available at http://bit.ly/1iv67Wk

Free Cloud Storage For Entrepreneurs: Top 6 Picks

Entrepreneurs and startups throughout the world are taking advantage of cloud-based applications to manage everything from productivity and teamwork to resource scheduling and communications. The first apps out offered the prized ability to share and distribute files from the web that has now emerged into the ubiquitous category of free cloud storage, comprising dozens of apps.

Although entrepreneurs make mistakes (as I’ve covered in the past), the ability to use cloud storage service with reliability and safety assurance can be one of the smartest move a startup executive can make.

With that in mind, I’ve tapped collaborator Adam Torkildson for a closer look at six of the most popular free cloud storage services emerging ventures can use to conduct business more efficiently and safely, particularly with an eye for recent concerns for ensuring Heartbleed vulnerability protections are securely in place:

Dropbox – Dropbox is one of the best known free cloud storage systems. One of its major advantages is that it offers clients specifically designed for Linux and Blackberry systems as well as the more standard OS offerings, so no matter what particular type of technology you or your employees enjoy employing, Dropbox can likely fit your needs. Heartbleed security: Dropbox was affected by Heartbleed, but there is a patch in place now, and previous users are encouraged to change their passwords.

Google Drive – Google Drive comes with a particularly generous 15GB of cloud storage when you link a Google account to it. It also exempts videos below a particular resolution and video content under 15 minutes in length, making it possible with wise data management to effectively enjoy unlimited space. Heartbleed security: Google was affected by Heartbleed and there’s a patch now in place. Google has said users do not need to change their passwords, but because of the previous vulnerability, better safe than sorry, we say.

OneDrive – This is Microsoft’s cloud storage service previously known as SkyDrive. One key difference of this cloud storage service is the social media integration OneDrive features, which is ideal for file sharing between colleagues across platforms and devices. It also directly integrates with Office 2013, perhaps the single most popular piece of business software on the market. Heartbleed security: Microsoft services were not running OpenSSL, according to LastPass, and were therefore not affected by Heartbleed.

Box – This service has been around even longer than Dropbox, originating in 2005. Most people are less familiar with Box as they have focused most of their efforts on enterprise-level solutions for larger businesses. However, the company offers increasingly competitive personal and small business-sized plans as well. The big advantage of Box is the ability to access and use the incredibly wide range of productivity-enhancing applications that have been developed for the platform over the years in support of the company’s corporate accounts. Heartbleed security: According to Mashable, “We’re currently working with our customers to proactively reset passwords and are also reissuing new SSL certificates for added protection.”

iCloud – For fans of Apple devices, the iCloud solution may make good sense. One of the biggest drawbacks of iCloud is that it doesn’t feature drag and drop functionality, nor can you back up photos from Android or Windows mobile devices. Files can be accessed via a PC once Apple’s Control Panel has been downloaded, but that’s about it. It does have impressive integration with Apple’s iWork office suite, and iPad and iPhone apps typically automatically interface with the platform as well. Heartbleed security: According to recode.net, “iOS and OS X never incorporated the vulnerable software and key web-based services were not affected.”

Firedrive – Firedrive.com makes this list because of the immense 50GB of free space the company gives new members, nearly 3x a fully-upgraded Dropbox account (and few people offer up enough referrals to Dropbox to bump their usage limits this high). In addition to the high storage space, Firedrive offers the same functionality of the other choices and adds social integration. Heartbleed security: Says CEO Joseph Turner, “Our backend systems were affected and were patched on Tuesday morning when the [Heartbleed] bug was made public. Our customer facing systems utilize Cloudflare, which patched the issue before it was publicly disclosed. We’ve also re-issued our SSL certificates and administrative private keys to keep our systems secure.

Are you ready to trust your storage space to the cloud? If so, these six free services should provide you with ample choices of free and reliable cloud storage to begin. What is your own favorite free cloud storage resource, and why? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Research assistance for this article was provided by collaborator Adam Torkildson, initial developer of PRScoreCard.com.

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It is great that some organizations are ensuring that “Heartbleed vulnerability protections are securely in place.”, but all kinds of organizations have scrambled to fix the bug, but as the vulnerable technology has been in place on up to two-thirds of all websites for approximately two years, the damage may already be done.

However, it’s important to note that not all organizations’ websites or software was affected. For instance, earlier versions of OpenSSL does not contain the vulnerable code and remains secure.

So what can we do to try to prevent this in the future?

First, while this could have wide reaching effects, some of which we may not know for a long time, not all SSL/TLS communications can be compromised.

But waiting for better software or protocols isn’t really an option. While new software will inevitably come along, there are limited guarantees, especially in the case of open-source technology such as OpenSSL, that it will be bug-free. In fact, we should expect that they will be breached.

The most viable option is proactive security of the data itself. By tokenizing or encrypting sensitive data at the point of creation or acquisition, it can be made useless to potential thieves, even in memory.

There’s no perfect answer to fix years of exposure, but moving forward, adopting the most proven, vendor-backed data security solutions that protect the data itself can offer significantly reduced risk over protocols alone.

Copy is more secure than Dropbox because each file uploaded is encrypted using AES256 algorithm. Copy is a cloud service of Barracuda Networks, an important company on the Internet. More information here https://techlib.barracuda.com/copy